


Target, Curious, Ex-Soldier

by LeMera (Agha)



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Past, The Winter Soldier - Freeform, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:05:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3259304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agha/pseuds/LeMera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier has a target. It's a simple mission.<br/>Things gets difficult however when an ex-soldier and a curious child get involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Target, Curious, Ex-Soldier

The target was little. It felt like that mattered, but he couldn’t figure out why.

The target was short with a shaved head and black skin. He lived with his mother. His father was dead. The Winter Soldier had killed the father, but the mother was smart. She’d burnt the body before he could take it.

Now they wanted the son. Alive. They needed his blood. A living person can provide more blood for a longer period of time than a dead one.

He was sitting in an apartment building with perfect view into the boy’s bedroom. There was a body at the morgue that was the same size and color as the boy. No one would miss that body. It was a simple job. Create a problem with the gas line. The woman came home, set out to light a candle, and _boom_. The bodies would be unrecognizable. No one would know that they were both already dead, that he had killed them. And he would be on his way to his bosses with the boy alive and well.

So he sat and watched the woman leave the building to pick up the target from daycare, the way she always did. Every day for the weeks he’d been watching them. Then she would come home and he would break in, kill her, take the boy, place the body, and set the place aflame. No one would be any wiser.

She returned twenty minutes later, right on time, just as she did every day. He straightened out, readied himself. He’d planned for this for weeks and it was finally time.

Only when she exited the car she was alone. He stared as he entered the building and watched her through the apartment complex’s windows as she ascended the stairs, all the way up to their own floor, despite having a fully functional elevator. He lost sight of her for a while when she entered the apartment, until she walked into her son’s room.

She sat down on her son’s bed and her whole body began to shake. She buried her face in the covers and he worried for a second that she was having some sort of seizure.

Suddenly, she looked up, through the window, straight at him. It was impossible for her to see him, but still he felt her eyes burning into him.

That was when he realized that the target wasn’t coming.

He was in the boy’s room before even having time to think about it. The woman stared at him. This time she could see him. Her face was tear-stained but her eyes were steady.

“I just gave my son away,” she told him, and her voice was shaking even though her tone was stable.

“Where is the target?” he demanded to know. He had to get the target. He had to complete the mission.

Or else.

“He’s safe,” the woman said. “My son in safe.”

The woman’s gaze never waivered. She knew she was going to die, tears kept running down her face, but she never showed any fear. It was as if all her worried had left her. She truly believed her son was safe, and apparently that was more important than her life.

Not even when he killed her did her resolution waver.

He placed the body from the morgue and set the apartment ablaze. He realized later that he should have kept her alive, tortured her for information. She was a schoolteacher, not a spy. There was no way she would be able to stay silent under torture.

But then he thought about how her gaze hadn’t waivered, even as he was killing her, and he thought that some thing you don’t need to be trained to withstand. Some things are just worth more than your pain.

At least, that might be what he would tell them when they asked him about it. In truth, there was just some part of him that really didn’t want to torture a schoolteacher who had just given her son away.

***

Finding the target once more took another few weeks. Finally, he found a name. Another woman. Slightly younger and darker than the schoolteacher. A former soldier. She apparently inherited a large amount of money from a cousin she’d never even met, and instead of living the good life like most would, she now spends most of her time and money in organizations helping women out of abusive and possibly deadly situations. Many men hated her and would probably pay to get her killed.

She was good. Better than good. He found her mostly by accident, otherwise it would’ve taken him at least a few more months to get an address in the middle of nowhere, and by then she would’ve been long gone. It was obvious that she’d done this before.

While he watched her he saw the proof of her past experience: a little girl. Slightly older than the target. Also short, also black, no shaved head but her hair was pretty short. The little girl was familiar somehow.

He listened to the woman talk to the target and the girl.

“You’re brother and sister now. You’re family. You have to look after each other.” She told them that every morning when they woke up, every night before they went to bed. She told them that as she taught the girl how to point a weapon and not hurt herself with it, and the boy how to put a knife into bad people. She told them that when she showed them where to hide, how to run, if anything bad happened. She told them that when she told them their new names, their new identities, lies that were now their lives.

She was asleep when he broke into the house. There were no neighbors close enough to hear anything or call the police before it was too late, but he’d made sure that the closest neighbors were gone just in case.

She was supposed to be asleep when he broke into the house. He should have known better.

The shot came out of the dark and hit him in the arm. He charged at her without thought, toppling her over. She fought back.

Oh did she fight back.

She kicked, she hit, she bit, she stabbed. There were no rules. This was a fight for survival.

He could take her, he knew he could. If his bosses had sent any one of their best she’d had a big chance of winning, but they hadn’t sent any of their best, they’d sent him. She couldn’t beat him.

That didn’t mean that he didn’t fear for his life for a split second when she drove a piece of wood into his shoulder (he couldn’t even remember when they’d broken that table). For a second, he’d forgotten that his shoulder was actually made out of metal and he’d waited for the pain. The pain didn’t come. She did tear his sleeve off though, and the split moment of surprise she felt over seeing his arm was all he needed to gain the upper hand again.

He’d already broken her fingers on the left hand, cut her left leg open, slashed her face down the side, broken her right shin, and probably broken a rib or two. He felt pain in his ribs too, as well as his flesh-and-blood shoulder and thigh. He knew he was bleeding. He didn’t care.

He pulled her shoulder out of its socket and that finally seemed to be it. She was down. She couldn’t use her arms or legs, could hardly breathe. It was over.

She stared him in the eyes for a while as he panted above her. “Don’t touch my children,” she wheezed out. It wasn’t a plea. She wasn’t begging. She was telling him.

“I’m just going to kill you and the girl,” he said. “I’m taking the target with me. That’s my mission.”

She continued to stare at him. “I understand.” And the thing was, she really did look like she understood. “You have a mission, but so do I. Keep the kids safe.”

He nodded at that. “You failed your mission,” he told her, and grabbed her around the throat. “I won’t fail mine.”

“Your arm makes a funny noise when you move it,” a new voice said. They both looked to the side, the woman with some difficulty. The girl, the little one, was standing by a door staring at them. In her hand there was a gun. Her feet were wide, her body guarded. Behind her was the target. She was shielding him with her body. _Protect your brother._

He didn’t know when they got there but by the woman’s face that hadn’t been the plan. “What are you doing here?” the woman hissed, some despair creeping into her voice.

“I can fix it,” the girl said, ignoring the woman. “I can fix your arm.” Her hands were shaking, the gun clenched in her hand. There were tears on her cheeks.

She looked familiar.

“I can fix your arm,” she repeated. “I’m pretty smart.”

He didn’t believe her. He didn’t believe she was in any way capable of doing anything to his arm. She shouldn’t be able to for a reason he couldn’t place. But she looked so sure.

He didn’t know what possessed him to leave the woman lying on the floor and walk over to one of the tables they hadn’t smashed. There was just something about the girl’s eyes that was just so damn familiar. He sat down with his arm on the table.

“No,” the woman hissed but the girl ignored her. She pushed the boy into the room she’d walked out of and locked the door, ignoring his wailing. He hadn’t heard anyone crying either, too busy fighting the woman.

The girl walked around the living room/kitchen area, most of which was broken to pieces, and got herself some tools. Then she sat down with him.

Her hands were small. They were much smaller than the hands that usually worked on his arm, and much gentler. They were shaking when she first touched his arm, but as they moved up and down examining it they stopped. She was still crying but she wiped the tears out of her eyes to stop them from impairing her view and then went to work.

He wasn’t sure what she did exactly. Would never remember, would never understand. All he knows is that some pressure left from where the arm was connected to his body and it was as if he’d been holding his breath and he could breathe again. That pressure had been a constant in his life for so long he’d almost forgotten that it felt wrong. Now everything felt right.

She’d been right; once she was done his arm didn’t make as much as a noise as before. It still made some noise, but it was nothing as bad as it used to be.

She finished up on his arm and a sense of wonder overtook him. This little girl had done this. Wasn’t that amazing. She shouldn’t be able to do it.

Why he didn’t know. He’d seen women work before, knew that they could be just as good, if not better than men. He’d seen black people work before, hell he’d just had a close fight with the woman laying on the floor fighting to breathe not too long ago.

So what was it that made it so strange that she could do this?

He looked down on her hands. They were so small. Small like a child’s.

It occurred to him that she was a child.

He’d known she was a child, but now he realized that she was a _child_. Five, maybe six years old. She was too young to understand the horrors of the world, too young to understand right and wrong and death. She was a little child.

He was planning to kill a child.

He looked over at the door. On the other side the target was still crying and banging on the door, asking to come out, to see what was going on. He was crying for his family.

He was going to take that child to his bosses. They were going to experiment on him. They were going to torture him.

That child was younger than the girl. More innocent, more naïve. He still thought thunder meant that angels were bowling in the sky and that Santa’s little helpers kept an eye on him all year long to check if he was a good boy and deserved gifts.

And he was going to give this child to his bosses.

_Nonononononononono._

He couldn’t. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t he couldn’t he couldn’t.

“Please don’t kill us,” the girl said suddenly. “Please don’t.”

He stood up, staring at the girl. She stared back.

“Please?”

He turned his back to her and walked back to the woman. The woman stared up at him. She was still bleeding, only slightly less now.

She looked at him as if she understood. She knew what was going on in his mind. She understood everything.

He crunched down next to her and grabbed her hand and arm. She nodded. He pulled sharply upwards and she let out a sharp hiss of pain as her bone got back where it was supposed to be.

“Mom!” the little girl shouted. She was crying again.

The woman held a hand up, the one with the broken fingers. “It’s ok,” she panted. “It’s ok.” He did her fingers next.

Slowly and methodically he bandaged and splint her wounds and bones. He helped her stand up but the moment he let go her legs buckled. She refused his hand a second time and dragged herself over to a bedroom, coming back out with a piece of wood as a crutch.

She wobbled to the locked door and got the tar- _boy_ out, picking him up and putting him on her hip, only letting out a small gasp of pain as his arms and legs tightened around her torso.

“Rhodes,” she whispered, the pain making it too difficult for her to speak. The little girl followed her mother out the front door.

“Goodbye metal-man,” the little girl said. “If you need help with your arm again, just ask.” The thing about the girl was; she looked terrified of him. Yet when she looked at his arm, curiosity seemed to push the fear away. It seemed her mind cared more about mechanics than her actual life.

He set the house on fire once they were far enough away.

He returned saying the boy was dead. He claimed ignorance. He’d misunderstood the order.

They were angry. More than angry, they were vicious.

He didn’t remember the pain exactly, but he remembered being afraid. He remembered wanting to die. He remembered wishing he’d just killed the woman and the girl and brought in the target.

He remembers feeling good about himself, proud even, for a second, before they ripped his memories away from him and he was once more a mindless killer.

***

It was almost fifteen years later and he remembers the things they tried to take away from him. He remembers that his name was Bucky, his best friend used to be Steve Rogers, and he has done terrible, horrible things. He’s killed, tortured and kidnapped so many people he’s lost count. He could never forgive himself, could never stop hating himself and the world.

But then he sits at a diner with a cup of coffee that has already gone cold, and a woman walks in with her four children. The woman’s got to be in her forties by now. She walks with a slight limp and there is a nasty, white scar running down her face. He overhears her son bickering with her oldest daughter.

“When you said you were going to upgrade my phone I thought you said you were getting me a new one,” he complained as she laid out the pieces of his phone on the table.

“I’m making it better than anything that you could possibly buy right now,” she said, confident, curious. He didn’t have the same faith.

The other two children were a bit younger. He recognized them. The son of an assassinated politician and the son of a Hydra deflector, both with mothers willing to do anything to protect them, including giving them away to an ex-soldier with a nasty scar and a limp with a reputation of being able to protect her children against the Winter Soldier himself.

The woman looks up and their eyes meet across the diner. At first she tenses, but when he doesn’t make a move she slowly relaxes. She leans back in her seat and gives him a weak smile, her scar crinkling around the edges. She looks at him as if she understands.

The waitress brings them their drinks and she raises her glass of beer in his direction. He raises his coffee cup back. And he feels just a little bit better about himself.


End file.
